Editing, step by step

Log in at the foot of the right hand column

You will be taken to ‘Dashboard’ where you can see pages and posts, old and new

Create a new Post (not page)

Save regularly by clicking on Save Draft at the top right. Don’t click on Publish till everything is final – see foot of page. (But if you accidentally publish, it is possible to Hide posts till they are ready.)

The editor there is a cut-down word processor. Note that pasting from Word will not preserve much formatting, and can sometimes be problematic. ‘Paste as Text’ is a useful command in the text editor’s menu bar.

Title

Catchy, not misleading. Forms the url, but the title itself can be changed later.

Subtitle

Put this in Bold on the first line. A subheading is not compulsory, but if you have one: put in punctuation if you want, and end with a full stop and a space after it, because this affects how it looks in the clip on the front page. For example in the post The Steel Windpipe, the subheading is:

A dying child in rural Russia in 1916, by Mikhail Bulghakov.

Item/ quote

This may be a picture, text, embedded video. The aim of textual extracts is to give the reader some of the experience of reading it, the flavour. And point to where to get more.

If quoting text, highlight and use the ” (Blockquote) button – it will then show in a grey box preceded by a quotation mark.

For video, audio, etc, see ‘Additional images’ below.

Standard headings

Use Heading 3 for these (see the box with “Paragraph” in it, different heading levels are an option there). Headings should be applied to plain text, not bold or Italic. Note that the ‘Heading’ formatting affects the whole paragraph around the cursor, whether or not you’ve highlighted any text. That’s unlike the Bold and Italic formats.

Commentary – usually up to 100-200 words. Bear in mind that the audience is not expected to be well versed in medical humanities, or in humanities in general.

Further info – Concise and bulleted info to include: more from the same book/same artist; commentaries by others; further info about the creator. Wikipedia links often good here. [Don’t like the Wikipedia info? Edit it!]

Contributed by – Name and (if desired) who/what they are (Professor of Medical Ethics, Aberystwyth; Medical student, Aberdeen)

More like this – put this on the last line with usually nothing beneath it. Tags/ specialties are inserted automatically below – if you’ve set these; see on.

Featured image

All posts must have a good ‘Featured image’. Add at the bottom right; you will probably have to scroll down to see that.

Usually you’ll want to upload a new image. It’s quite easy in WordPress, which compresses them automatically.

Be sure you have permission to use any image (or anything else you’re putting up). Have you seen CCsearch from Creative Commons? It enables you to limit a search to reusable images. Try Google images, Flickr.

Additional images, video, audio etc

Additional images can be inserted in the text. For instance, a close-up or better view of a work of art, or a related image.

Video/audio – embed video using ‘Add Media’ – usually ‘from url’ in the left hand menu.

You can also paste in ’embed’ html – you are offered this in YouTube or Vimeo, for instance. It may give a better result. Audio players similarly.
To do this, switch from ‘Visual’ to ‘Text’ at the top right, in the light grey frame to the editing area. This will show the page’s html coding. Find where you want it to appear, and paste it in on a new line. If inserting new lines, do that after the end of a phrase. Paragraphs end with </p> – so after that. Too complex? Ask!

Add categories and Tags – please use existing ones, and be very careful about adding new, to keep our terminology managable. We should discuss new ones from time to time.

Categories = specialties. You can choose as many as you like

Tags – The nature of the content AND something about it – click on ‘Choose from the most used tags’ to show existing tags.

Before finally publishing

Show it to other editors for comment

Continue to just ‘Save’ until all is good and final. It will be saved as a draft post in the list of all posts.

You can Preview at any time with the Preview button

Hit the Publish button when all is final

Check it looks good. You can make further changes still.

You can also schedule posts to be published some time in the future. After scheduling a date and time, click on Publish (it will be delayed till the date arrives).

After publishing

It is possible, and OK, to edit a post – for example to add new info links. Click on Edit, make your changes, then click the Update button.